Dr. Google: Friend or Foe
Week 12 hit. We were finally out of the first trimester and I could not have been more excited. For the past ~8 weeks my anxiety had been running so high I’d need a ladder to bring it back down. Let’s find out why.
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Around week 10 I was in my office when I started to get severe abdominal cramps. When I got to the bathroom there was significant bleeding, so, naturally, I panicked. I immediately did the wrong thing and consulted the experts at Google.com on “week 10 bleeding”. Let’s just say the results did not help with the anxious feelings.
- miscarriage
- ruptured placenta
- uterine tearing
- cancer - (like what?!??)
So many things could be going wrong. I had been terrified of miscarriage from day one because of the surgery I had just 2 months before we found out we were pregnant, I was always worried it was too good to be true and maybe God did not intend for us to have a child. Regardless, I took Dr. Google’s advice and called my OB’s office (but not before calling my husband and bawling my eyes out). The OB’s nurse asked for the color of the blood, frequency, blah blah blah - asked every question other than “how soon do you want to come get checked?” So when the bleeding continued I kept going back to my old friend Google, searching for some reassurance.
When no reassurance came, I kept peeing on pregnancy tests hoping to be reassured by the positive indication. Pro tip: a pregnancy test can still show positive for weeks after a miscarriage due to the active hormones still in your body. I wasted weeks of worrying until my next OB appt - time for an ultrasound!
And there it finally was - the most blissful reassurance - beating a steady 142 bpm. We had made it to week 12 and were officially out of the high risk zone for miscarriage. I felt an instant calm knowing that we had hit this first major milestone - but little did I know this was just the first of many speed bumps along the road.
- miscarriage
- ruptured placenta
- uterine tearing
- cancer - (like what?!??)
So many things could be going wrong. I had been terrified of miscarriage from day one because of the surgery I had just 2 months before we found out we were pregnant, I was always worried it was too good to be true and maybe God did not intend for us to have a child. Regardless, I took Dr. Google’s advice and called my OB’s office (but not before calling my husband and bawling my eyes out). The OB’s nurse asked for the color of the blood, frequency, blah blah blah - asked every question other than “how soon do you want to come get checked?” So when the bleeding continued I kept going back to my old friend Google, searching for some reassurance.
When no reassurance came, I kept peeing on pregnancy tests hoping to be reassured by the positive indication. Pro tip: a pregnancy test can still show positive for weeks after a miscarriage due to the active hormones still in your body. I wasted weeks of worrying until my next OB appt - time for an ultrasound!
And there it finally was - the most blissful reassurance - beating a steady 142 bpm. We had made it to week 12 and were officially out of the high risk zone for miscarriage. I felt an instant calm knowing that we had hit this first major milestone - but little did I know this was just the first of many speed bumps along the road.
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